Hakodate

OK. Now I have no issue with wildlife – I like animals, birds, fish, insects, anything really, with the small exception of spiders. Gary doesn’t like spiders either, in fact he likes them even less than me. And his dislikes extend to anything that scuttles really, be it insectoid or crustacean.

So you can imagine the look on his face yesterday when we were served some crab miso soup. Now that sounds fairly benign doesn’t it? Crab? Well, the crabs we get in the UK are pretty innocent, small things. Out here they look like they belong in a Scifi B movie! I’d like you to try to picture this miso soup turning up, with half a crab poking out of the bowl. Each of its legs was about 30cm long – about a foot for those of you who still like the old imperial measures! Imagine its body sitting in the big soup bowl, but the legs wouldn’t fit so they were curled over the side with the claws hitting the table top. It looked a bit like the soup contained a giant clawed hand with long spooky fingers, or a face hugger from Alien!

I looked at it, blinked, froze. And waited for Gary to see it as the waiter passed it over his shoulder. His face was a picture when he did! Absolute terror – eyes widened, expression froze, body totally rigid. And he stayed absolutely still for a good 20 seconds after the ‘thing’ was deposited in front of us. Then we looked at each other and wondered how the hell we were meant to eat it with only chopsticks!

We chickened out completely. We each took a nice safe piece of salmon sushi instead, and hoped it would go away. When it didn’t, we eventually managed to move it to an empty sushi tray so at least we could get at the soup. As we moved it all the hinges on its legs moved as if the thing was still alive. And please remember that each leg was 30cm long. With claws a good inch long at the end. Please consider that.

Anyway, things like this crustacean seem to be common here in Hakodate. This town is a harbour situated on a peninsular at the Southern point of Hokkaido. It’s not very densely populated for a Japanese town, and has large mountains surrounding it. We climbed one at the end of the peninsular yesterday to get a fantastic view – have a look at the photos below.

Wandering through Hakodate you see lots of evidence that it’s a major fishing port. Especially notable are the large tanks at the side of the road containing the catch of the day. Strangely enough, the local specialty seems to be crab. And now we know that the horror we encountered over dinner is actually a tiddler by Hakodate’s standards! We found one purple monster that had a body the size of a watermelon and legs each about a yard long. I’m truly not exaggerating. And they are everywhere! My favourites are the crabs that seem to be trying to escape from their roadside tanks – you’ll walk past to see them hooking a few huge claws over the side in a bid for freedom. Argh.

This morning we took the train to the nearby national park of Onuma Quasi. This is yet another beautiful wilderland of volcanoes, forest and lakes – this time convenietly a short walk from a rail station. Also, someone has in the past helpfully linked many of the small islands near the lake shore by a series of arching bridges.

We spent a lovely few hours strolling around, admiring the views, lily ponds, and 10cm long tadpoles. But probably the most impressive event of the day was again centered around Hakodate and its infamous crabs. As we wandered past the morning market on the way to the railway station I asked a fisherman if he’d mind me taking a photo of a medium sized crab he had on a weighing scales. He enthusiastically agreed, then picked up the monster and tried to hand it to Gary. My lovely boyfriend turned an interesting shade of off white and backed away, pursued by the friendly fisherman! In the end, when he could see Gary could probably run faster than him, the fisherman was more than happy to pose with the crab, as you can see below. It’s a shame it wasn’t one of the biggest specimens, but I think it’s enough to give you an idea…

Is this the real Japan? Or is it the sweet volcanic lakes and cherry blossom trees we saw in Toyako Onsen? I don’t know. We’re scared, but on the other hand we’re really enjoying exploring it anyway!